Just bought one of these to review on the other site, and have to say I'm rather impressed with it right out of the box. Nice wood with checkering, wood to metal fit is excellent, nice cushy recoil pad, lever travel is super slick once past the point where the rotating bolt locks/unlocks - and even that's pretty smooth. Comes with a set of Skinner steel Weaver-style bases and a hammer extension for mounting a scope. I got the sighted model in .308 Winchester which has a nice (Marbles?) folding rear sight and a ramped front site with white bead. Detachable 4-round magazine is all metal and sits flush with the bottom of the receiver as it should. The magazine release button is on the right side and sits flush with the receiver so nothing sticking out to get caught on something or accidentally pushed when carrying the rifle.
It's a little heavier than expected for having an alloy receiver (8.5-lbs with scope). Drop at comb is a little high for the open sights as I have to slide my head back about 1/2" or so to get a proper sight picture, but the trade-off is that the extra height helps with eye alignment when using a scope. Pictures show a Leupold VX-R 1.25-4x HOG mounted, but I've since pulled that in favor of a Leupold FX-III 6x42 scope for accuracy testing. I'll probably go back to the VX-R or a similar 1.5-6x big-game type scope after the review, or run it without a scope as bigger scopes on lever guns just looks odd to me.
Hoping to get out and sight it in tomorrow. Have some of the new Federal Premium Gold Medal Berger 185gr Match and Edge TLR 175gr Big Game ammo to try, but want to pick up some cheap Ball ammo for sighting in. No sense in wasting the good stuff on that menial task.
P.S: Hey Fred, I was wrong - they do offer this in .223/5.56 (not .22-250).
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